


And I Will Grow With You

by InsominiacArrest



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, I'm proud of this, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-12
Updated: 2015-12-12
Packaged: 2018-05-06 08:05:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5409290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsominiacArrest/pseuds/InsominiacArrest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lapis is a hot-blooded mess and Peridot is a contained storm, somehow they manage to make it up as they go.</p><p>A love story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And I Will Grow With You

**Author's Note:**

> As in I just really wanted to tell a love story :')

She spots her nose on strangers faces. When she walks through the library she sees her in a man with hair sticking on end, and women with a crooked mouth and can’t help but think. Peridot.

And all she can think, is ‘oh there she is!’ And her heart races.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. But here Lapis was, seeing her in strangers and feeling sick like a million little pin pricks of ice in her stomach.

That is when she is 16.

\--------------------

When Lapis was 5 she met a shrill little girl with bad manners and the outlook of a mad doctor. The girl told her she looked like a sad llama-face on the first day and Lapis ignored her for half a year.

Half a year later she sits down next to her at recess and says, ‘I heard you poured sand down Johny T.’s boxers.’

She sniffs, ‘he deserved it.’ Lapis nods sagely.

‘Rose said it wasn’t nice… How do you feel about Rose and her friends?’ Lapis asks curiously.

'Bleh,’ Peridot screws up her face and sticks her tongue out, Lapis smiles like the sun come out. Finally.

‘Let’s build a sand castle together.’

‘Why?’

Lapis frowns, ‘we can pretend to live in it– and that we never have to go to school again.’

‘I like school .’

‘You can be the princess of it.’ Checkmate .

Peridot agrees and Lapis is her knight and they build a castle out of sand. John T. tries to kick it over with all his might, she chases him away and she feels sunburn on her back as just a battle scar of accomplishment.

\----------------------

Lapis is nine. She says she wants to kiss Timmy Thomas, and Peridot says that’s gross and Lapis pouts.

They trade clothes like it’s the stock market because Lapis saw that on TV and thought that’s how best friends acted.

Peridot walks like she has rocks in her shoes, and her parents tell her to walk taller still. Do better, join more.

Lapis wants to fight them. But she wanted to fight a lot of things, her parents call her a ‘firecracker,’ a quick whip when they’re happy and other things when they’re not.

Lapis likes Peridot’s house. Peridot hates it, and they trade clothes and stories and Lapis feels a little safer in her own skin and firecracker mouth.

She tells her she wants to kiss Timmy Thomas, she says she needs to practice. Peridot is indignant, Lapis reminds her of the time she took the fall for her when Peridot threw a tantrum and broke the art room. 

Peridot says, fine, ‘but Timmy better appreciate it.’

It was her first kiss, a peck, only a peck. She didn’t think it counted, she wasn’t sure it meant anything. But that was when she was nine.

\----------------------

When Lapis is 14 they got in their first fight.

Peridot said Lapis shouldn’t try to smoke, Lapis says it was her body she can try what she likes. Peridot yells about how strange she had gotten, a weirdo with Indie rock mixes and friends that blink like the world is turning in slow motion.

Lapis breaks, she bites out that Peridot didn’t have enough friends to fill a thimble, only Jasper talked to her and Jasper was the worst. She held herself like an tiny, angry army general whose parents march her in line to the beat of good grades and bad people skills.

Peridot cries. Lapis  _was_ a firecracker, one who blew up in people’s faces. She broke her favorite CD that night.

Somehow, somehow, that same year after a month they find each other still visiting the same ice cream place they always did and give and take begrudging ‘sorry’s’ and then jokes and recipes, and laugh again. And again.

Lapis didn’t know why she fought her. But she wanted her safe and whole, and if she had to find new friends that didn’t stick cigarettes in her open mouth then so be it.

\---------------------

Lapis is 16. She saw her in strangers faces. Her heart skips a beat at the placement of her hair and crooked slope of her mouth and people in green doing silly victory dances over anything.

She saw her in strangers faces.

Peridot’s voice chased her across her dreams and she wakes up in cold sweets and little pinpricks of tears at the corner of her eyes.

Was this it? Was this love?

Peridot would tell her scientists say teenagers don’t know what love is. Peridot would say they only feel infatuation.

She would show her the wikipedia page and a thousand things on the internet having to do with brain chemistry. She’d be so excited.

If Peridot knew, if she knew, she would say so many things that Lapis couldn’t guess so she swallows her tongue and tries not to let the little red hearts around her eyes glow like firefly’s in darkness.

Lapis buys Peridot a face cake for her birthday. She went two cities over and spent more money than anyone should on a joke-cake. It has Bill Nye on it saying ‘Science is the Shit’ her parents glare at Lapis like the devil was invited, but they can’t do anything in a crowd, Peridot loves it.

Loves it. Absolutely, wholly.

And Lapis cries, was this love?

\---------------------

Lapis is 21, she’s drunk and telling Peridot to come have a threesome with her. Come to her room. Come anywhere with her.

Peridot says their friendship should have come with a disclaimer.

Lapis keeps her words to herself and her brain in a loop of one day, one day.

Peridot spends nights and days in the library and drags Lapis through classes like a gladiator. Lapis eventually picks up steam and carries Peridot through her bad days too.

The ones where she hates her parents and herself and Lapis begs her to move in with her. So she won’t be alone.

Lapis is 21, and Peridot is finally in her house, a roof of warmth and yet distance.

Peridot carries herself with a drooping spine. But she stops breaking things and calling Pearl in the middle of the night to tell her she hates her.

And Lapis stops smoking. Again.

\-----------------------

Lapis is 24 and she doesn’t know what she’s doing.

They graduated. But she was…she wasn’t moving and the world was spinning like a top without an edge, bent on making her sick.

Peridot sits on her porch, boxes in hand, but she looks at Lapis. She looks up at her.

“I don’t want to go.” She states dimly, desperately. Lapis reluctantly points out she has a job offer in silicon valley. Green, green dollars and sunshine. 

The next day they stand awkwardly across from one another, Lapis bites her blistering firecracker mouth shut. Until she can’t anymore.

They bring themselves to the porch, and Lapis breaks down into a million pieces of lightweight paper. She’s in love, she’s in love, she’s in love. Since 16, since nine, since 6. She finally can’t hold it back. Don’t leave.

Peridot says she never wants to leave.

Lapis surrenders to it. She is 24 and she gets her second first kiss.

\-----------------------

Lapis is 27 and at the beach, the waves rolls in and out, she builds a castle in the middle of the sun streaked blinding white. Peridot complains, grins like a cat at the waves and forces Lapis to put sunscreen on.

They build a sand castle, Lapis is the knight and Peridot is her Princess. That’s what she tells her.

She looks up to the flag at the very top, and at the bottom is a ring. A heart-in-your-throat glowing gold ring.

Lapis is a 27 year old at a small time job and no direction, but she’s in love– and Peridot gets a kiss.

Months later, she gets to say exactly all this, the story of her life on the aisle of white and lips like confessions to a priest’s ear.

From 6 to 98. She wanted to be there, and the church bells sound like pinky swears and childish dares, they drive away in a convertible. Lapis was in love and she is 27 and the only face she can see is Peridots. 

**Author's Note:**

> insomniac-arrest.tumblr.com !


End file.
